For more info: "Bob Dylan Suprises Crowd at Willie Nelson’s 2023 Farm Aid Festival in Indiana/In July 1985, the singer's remark onstage at the Live Aid charity mega-concert inspired [Willie] Nelson to create his first benefit for America's family farmers in September of that year" (Billboard).Quick clip from Bob Dylan's surprise guest appearance with The Heartbreakers at Farm Aid tonight. "Maggie's Farm" — first time he's played it in over a decade: pic.twitter.com/ck3LVqw0gj
— Ray Padgett (@rayfp) September 24, 2023
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Man, has he gotten old. Nevertheless, he's vastly more competent than Mr. Biden even though he's two years older.
Good and bad, I define these terms
Quite clear, no doubt, somehow
Ah, but I was so much older then
I’m younger than that now
They say, "Sing while you slave," and he just looks bored.
Yes, Farm Aid is a still a thing -- annually, for 30+ years.
The keyboard player started doing something interesting at the :40 mark but, otherwise, I'd be embarrassed to sound like that.
Aw. RIP Tom Petty.
I say this as a long-time devout Bob Dylan fan: That was a really pathetic rendition of "Maggie's Farm."
But I love that he was playing with The Heartbreakers.
Do you think that the studio musicians on Bringing It All Back Home, Blonde on Blonde, and John Wesley Harding understood the songs they were playing on?
Charlie McCoy, who played the amazing acoustic fills on Desolation Row, ended the penultimate verse, which has a bunch of underwater images (Neptune, Titanic, mermaids, and "windows of the sea"--recalling the last stanza of Prufrock), found a way to make his guitar sound like bubbles rising to the surface. Though of course he didn't have to think through what was behind the images.
Another reprise from the geezers of rock and roll, folk corps. Farm aid is just nostalgia now, farmers are hardly a progressive center, and are guilty of “climate change” and the harmful production of meat.
From the Indy Star:
“John Mellencamp, Neil Young, Willie Nelson and Dave Matthews stood before a standing ovation at the Ruoff Music Center in Noblesville on Saturday morning. But the music titans held no instruments in their hands and no belting of song lyrics had brought the crowd to their feet.
Instead, the audience in the intimate, quarter-full amphitheater joined in a single, succinct chant:
“Family farms, yes. Factory farms, no.”
A Factory Farm is a family farm at scale. There is no difference in technology. A boutique farm is an unprofitable farm with ancient technology.
In other words, humans having food to eat is not sustainable.
The left half of the stage are Heartbreakers, although the rest of the band looks like the Dirty Knobs. Mike Campbell to the immediate left of Dylan was Tom Petty’s co-writer on a lot of TP and the HB songs. We saw his band at the Fox Theatre a couple months ago and Steve Ferrone (drummer in this video and the Heartbreakers) sat in with the Knobs that night. Benmont Tench at left on keyboards was also an integral part of the Heartbreakers and still plays a mean piano.
During his first concert tour of England in 1965, recorded in part in the film: Don't Look Back, the following exchange took place:
'Bob Dylan: I'm just as good a singer as Caruso. Have you heard me sing? Have you ever heard me sing?
Journalist : I like Caruso better.
Bob Dylan: Ah, well, you see right there, now. Right there we have a little disagreement. I happen to be just as good as him. A good singer. You have to listen closely. But, I hit all those notes.'
A different internet site reminds me that Dylan finally wins that verbal duel by asserting:
"...and I can hold my breath three times as long [as Caruso] if I wanted to"
Bob is looking old...it happens.
Willie seems like a good guy.
Just a warning for all readers: When Willie Nelson finally leaves this mortal plane of existence, be prepared for Texas shutting down for a week to a month for memorials and mourning.
Bob's a lucky man. Still alive at his age. And able to play. Very, very lucky.
'Another reprise from the geezers of rock and roll, folk corps. Farm aid is just nostalgia now, farmers are hardly a progressive center, and are guilty of “climate change” and the harmful production of meat.'
I think it's kind of like the PGA Champions Tour.
A bunch of old guys hanging out with their friends, reliving the glory days and getting away from their wives for a bit.
And maybe make some money while they're at it...
2023 FarmAid?? What the?? what are they looking for aid from?
Land Prices Too High?
Corn Prices Too High?
California's BS pork and chicken rules?
Iowan2 ? your input please? Other than the drought it don't seem like there's much to complain about
At least he didn't fall and break a hip!
I wouldn't sing Maggies Farm either if I'd heard Rage do it.
There is a great interview with the NIN guys about Cash absolutely owning Hurt. They are talking about how much they like what Johnny Cash did and Reznor (who wrote the lyrics) said: I never knew what that was supposed to sound like until I heard the Cash's rough demo in the studio.
I thought that showed a lot of class.
Serious question (to borrow a Gilbar phrase):
Where does Farm Aid $$ go?
VT is losing so many family farms. The land, most in VT Land Trust, is being gobbled up into the huge(1000+cows) farms. The entire landscape is being changed as laws about riparian buffers are created and trees along riverbanks are being planted.
Our pioneering ancestors would cringe.
“ A Factory Farm is a family farm at scale. There is no difference in technology. A boutique farm is an unprofitable farm with ancient technology.”
You and I surely are not viewing the same picture.
Dylan never could sing worth a damn and today he sounds worse. I've heard a guy drunkenly sing "I've got a skeeter on my peter, sweet Marie" better than that. Sorry Dylan fans.
I read about this earlier today. That's great... Shame the Heartbreakers didn't have more time to prepare, but that's rock'n'roll. Haven't seen Bob hold a guitar in about 8-10 years.
The Circle Network where I live is broadcasting all of the concert this afternoon. Free of charge. I just watched the part with Bob Dylan a little while ago. There is a lot of good music here. I like it. So fuck all of you who automatically dismiss all music here because you don't agree with the politics of the musicians. Get a life.
Farm Aid 2023
CIRCLNET - 12:00 PM Sun, Sept 24
Performances by Willie Nelson, Neil Young, John Mellencamp, Dave Matthews, Margo Price, Bobby Weir, Lukas Nelson, Nathaniel Rateliff, Allison Russell and more.
I just heard "It's Flooding Down in Texas," and it blew me away. Old geezers do know how to play the blues.
If Hobbits could sing and perform rock 'n roll, this is what it would look like!
(Sorry, Ann, but I couldn't resist.)
Watching Willie croak out "Mamas Don't Let Your Babies be Cowboys" I was reminded of the ravages of old age and thinking of his old buddy Waylon Jennings who passed at the tender age of 64.
Bob likes to change the performance from the version of the recording, which left the Heartbreakers unprepared. Oh well, at least his voice is better than ever.
“You and I surely are not viewing the same picture.”
Sorry, I am sure you have a better viewpoint, in my world a family farm is 60 acres in Iowa with a guy who works his own combine and grain dryer, and a factory farm is 3000 acres in Iowa that hires people to run combines and dryers. They both use the same seed and chemicals. I am grain centric I guess. I am not a farmer but only had them as neighbors and friends.
To lonejustice:
Never once in this thread have I heard anything held against a musician b/c of the politics they hold.
Only the fact that certain voices are not as melodic in the ears of some- as they are to others.
You’re a one trick pony.
Geez.
Be best.
Well, Josephbleau- I stand w/a little humility b/c idk what that would look like. VT is so different (except for the monocultured cornfields). I’m in the dairy business. 60milkers and pastured on the rolling hills. Factory farms don’t pasture as a rule- and can have thousands of cattle.
Thank you for the Iowan insight :0)
"Never once in this thread have I heard anything held against a musician b/c of the politics they hold." Easily the most ridiculous post I've read here. Just look up Springsteen entries here.
We attended the first Farm Aid concert in 1985 and it was awesome and wet. That was my first time attending a concert (festival) that featured so so many great performers including Dylan, Mellencamp, Tom Petty, Dylan, Johnny Cash, Lou Reed, Neil Young and Willy- my best memory was John Denver. It was a massive sing along - whether you liked him or not - you knew the words to his hits.
I didn't listen to it. If you've read my comments on listening to Dylan sing in previous posts, you know it's a painful thing to me. A nonsensical thing to even pretend to like. So I won't. And judging by the comments above me, my thinking that he's probably not sounding any better decades later than he did in the 60s...is correct.
"Just look up Springsteen entries here."
In this thread ("Never once in this thread have I heard...")? The only instance of "Springsteen" in a search of these comments I could find was yours, at 8:17 PM.
As much as Ann loves Dylan for his Nobel Laureatness and the fact she can’t get over some Vice-Principal in 1969 telling her “No Skirts!” … have y’all grokked Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone”?
It’s about some Upper-Class White Girl subjecting herself to the streets, getting turned out, and figuring out that her life choices haven’t been optimal.
This song was released in 1965.
On second thought, perhaps Dylan does deserve his Nobel.
As much as Ann loves Dylan for his Nobel Laureatness and the fact she can’t get over some Vice-Principal in 1969 telling her “No Skirts!” … have y’all grokked Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone”?
It’s about some Upper-Class White Girl subjecting herself to the streets, getting turned out, and figuring out that her life choices haven’t been optimal.
This song was released in 1965.
On second thought, perhaps Dylan does deserve his Nobel.
As much as Ann loves Dylan for his Nobel Laureatness and the fact she can’t get over some Vice-Principal in 1969 telling her “No Skirts!” … have y’all grokked Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone”?
It’s about some Upper-Class White Girl subjecting herself to the streets, getting turned out, and figuring out that her life choices haven’t been optimal.
This song was released in 1965.
On second thought, perhaps Dylan does deserve his Nobel.
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